Built on the success of previous conferences in this series, LBS 2018 aims to offer a common ground to colleagues from various disciplines and practice where they can meet, interact and exchange knowledge, experience, plans and ideas on how LBS can and could be improved and on how it will influence both science and society.

The Call for Papers is currently open (also available as a PDF). We call for full papers, work in progress, and showcases. High-quality full paper submissions are intended to be published in Springer’s Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography Series. The best full and work in progress papers will be invited to submit an extended version to the Journal of Location Based Services.

Important Dates

12 July 2017, Submission of full & work-in-progress papers

29 September 2017, Notification of acceptance for full & work-in-progress papers

Built on the success of previous conferences in this series, LBS 2016 aims to offer a platform for scholars, researchers, and industry/market operators from various disciplines and practice to meet, interact and exchange knowledge, experience, plans and ideas on how LBS can and could be improved and on how it will influence both science and society.

The Call for Papers is currently open. Deadlines for submission are June 1 for full papers, July 1 for work in progress, and September 18 for showcases. High-quality submissions are intended to be published in the Journal of Location Based Services and in a book of the Springer series Lecture Notes on Geoinformation and Cartography. More information can be found at lbsconference.org.

We are looking forwards to your contributions and to meeting you in Vienna!

November 8 and 9, 2015 the (co)chairs of ICA’s Commissions and Working Groups met with the members of the Executive Committee (EC) to discuss the future activities of the ICA. The objective of the meeting was to offer the ICA officers a good and fresh start for the 2015–2019 period. A side effect of the meeting was that all of us met new and old friends, and we had a chance to become familiar with each other.

The meeting, hosted by the Past-President at the Technical University of Vienna, was organized in three distinct parts. The first dealt with “What ICA expects from you”, the second part with “What do you expect from ICA”. The third part was linked to the International Map Year (IMY) and the UN sustainability goals.

What ICA expects from you

After an introduction round, Laszlo Zentai, our Secretary-General informed us on how ICA Commissions and Working Groups are supposed to operate, based on our statues and by-laws. This included information on how to organize a Commission (Chair/co-chair, website, members etc), how to communicate within ICA (the newsletter, the bi-annual report to the EC), options for publication of results (our International Journal of Cartography, again ICA news and the Springer book series), activities related to our International Cartographic Conferences (reviews, (joint)workshops, business meetings), and financial support. This might seem trivial since all information is available on the website, but it proves that these sessions are useful anyhow.

In an exercise the (co)chairs had to revisit their terms of reference, and decide which of those will be their focus point in the next four years. These so-called flagship projects could be joint commissions efforts. Also they had to think of there planned activities on the short term and for whole 2015-2019 period, to allow us share and combine events. And as you can imagine, they had to indicate how they would think to contribute to the International Map Year.

What do you expect from ICA

This session started with short presentations by different EC members of what we call ICA’s instruments, such as our strategic plan, the ICA directory, publications, the research agenda, our scholarships, and ICA external relations with the Joint Board of GIS and the GeoUnions. The first unites international organizations involved with geospatial information and strives to act as a collective and unified voice at the international level, such as within the UN. The second represents those geo-related organizations that are member of ICSU.

After this flow of information, the (co)chairs where asked to react and express their opinion about our instruments both from a positive and negative perspective. They where also asked to come forward with any issue they would like to see discussed to be able to let ICA better operate.

IMY / Mapping the sustainability goals

The third part of the workshop dealt with the International Map Year (IMY) and how we as ICA can make an impact by “mapping” the sustainability goals.

The new UN 17 sustainability goals can be found at sustainabledevelopment.un.org. Each of these goals has a specific objective. For instance Goal 4 on education states: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. For each goal a number of targets have been set. An example of an educational target is “By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes”. To see if those target are met multiple indicator have been defined. Indicators are numbers, for instance “Completion rate (primary, lower secondary, upper secondary)”.

These indicators can be mapped. As individual variable or in combination with each other. During the IMY ICA will organize a cartographic exhibition at the next UNGGIM meeting in New York, August 2016. The plan is to create a set of 17 posters, one for each goal that demonstrates how maps can help to get insight in these goals. The plan is not just to create a single map for each goal. The idea is to offer different cartographic perspectives on these goals via story maps. These perspectives are offered by our Commissions. Each of the 17 goals has been adopted by two Commissions and together these wil map a goal based on their skills set. So for instance the poster that involved the Commission on Visual analytics might show how in an exploratory environment one can combine different indicators to reveal trends, the poster involving the Commission Mountain Cartography could show how the landscape influences the distribution of certain phenomena. The poster co-designed by the Commission on Map Projections might show good and bad examples of global projection.

The final goal of this exercise is to create an atlas of best practices of mapping the sustainability goals. This should be ready by the end of the 2015–2019 period.

– Menno-Jan KraakPresident of the International Cartographic Association

All chairs and vice-chairs of the ICA commissions and working groups were invited to join an ICA meeting in Vienna on 8–9 November 2015 to plan and discuss their activities for the term 2015–2019. 46 chairs, vice-chairs and members of the executive committee followed the invitation and spent two intensive workshop days at Technische Universität Wien.

Cartography is a domain including technology, art and science. In order to be able to fully deploy the capacity of cartography education in all these areas is key. It happens to be that respective university programmes, professional trainings, and job trainings are more and more changing their scopes and names, leaving the unique competence combination of cartographers, being able to deal with big data, modern technologies and artistic design, vacant.

It is of this reason, that programmes dealing with dedicated cartographic education are of growing importance. Let me highlight here two programmes, which ICA is taking significant note of.

The International Course on Management and Applied Techniques in Cartography (IC_Cartotechnology), run by the Institut Cartografic i Geològic de Catalunya, has the aim to provide a wide range of geoinformation professionals with a capacity-building instrument that covers the basis of advanced and up-to-date techniques, tools and critical thinking in cartography. It therefore integrates all the disciplines, approaches and techniques used to acquire and exploit geospatial data. Several ICA collegues have contributed to the first successful edition by giving lectures. The second edition starts in September 2014 and enrolment is still possible.

Three central european universities, the Technical University Munich, the Vienna University of Technology and the Technical University Dresden, are offering a joint Master Programme on Cartography. This is a 4-semester programme and it leads into a joint master degree of all three universities. Currently four intakes have been accepted and are in different stages of their studies. The programme is competitive, as only a restricted number of students can be accepted and has so far proven to be most successful in achieving the aim of educating experts with capacity in technologies, data handling and design skills.

– Update: SOMAP 2014 is merged with the LBS 2014 symposium and will take place in Vienna, Austria, from 26–28 November 2014. Please find all details on the SOMAP website: somap.cartography.at –

The International Cartographic Association (ICA) is pleased to invite you to the Second International Symposium on Service-Oriented Mapping (SOMAP) in Potsdam from 6–8 October 2014 in Vienna, Austria from 26–28 November 2014.

Geospatial data and services are the main building blocks for geospatial infrastructures and fundamental to service-oriented mapping and realtime applications. Geospatial infrastructures make use of different paradigms: maintaining, sharing and use (instead of collect and own). Developments in these paradigms are leading to evolutions in availability and accessibility of geospatial data and services coupled with the added value of geospatial products and applications in the modern geospatial production environment.

Geospatial trends are constantly growing and developing such as sensor networks, realtime processing, volunteered geographic information, open governmental data, in-situ geospatial processing and striking visualization techniques creating many new possibilities but also new restrictions and problems based on massiveness, heterogeneity and contextual flexibility. Challenges like handling big data, aggregate different sources, standards for a homogenuous data, and disappearing sources/content are growing.

SOMAP2014 is a venue that brings together experts from research, government, non-governmental organisations, standardization bodies and industry to present, document and discuss trends in service-based mapping, which covers delivery, processing, integration, analysis, collaboration as well as visualization of geospatial data and services.

The 11th International Symposium on Location Based Services will be held in Vienna, Austria, 26–28 November 2014.

The symposium will offer a common ground to colleagues from various disciplines and practice where they can meet, interact and exchange knowledge, experience, plans and ideas on how LBS can and could be improved and on how it will influence both science and society.

Map of the Month 05/2012 is the Austrian school atlas Großer Kozenn. The atlas is a product by Ed. Hölzel, an Austrian publishing house founded in 1844. At the last ICC the atlas won the first jury’s prize in the category “Atlases: educational cartographic resources”.

Organizers: National Committee of Geographers of Ukraine, Ukrainian Geographical Society, ICA Commission on Atlases, Ukrainian Cartographic Association, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (Institute of Geography), State Scientific and Production Enterprise “Kartographia”

Topics: Characteristics of national and regional atlases of different countries of the world, modern conceptual approaches to the creation of national and regional atlases, problems of information reflection and coordination of thematics of border regions maps, Software and technology of creation of paper and electronic versions of Continue reading →